The Topography of Crime O NE day, when I was in
prison, the chaplain talked to me on the topography of crime. He said : " It is a strange fact that nearly all the murders in London are committed north of the Thames." I recalled as many murders as I .could, and was astonished to discover that all those I remembered had been committed, as the chaplain asserted, above and not below the Thames. I hastily resolved to remove myself to the Surrey side of the river: " When a murder is committed south of the Thames," the chaplain continued, " it is nearly always a dull murder."
I interrupted him with a literary allusion : " What Pegeen Mike in The Play-Boy of the Western World calls ' a sneaky kind of murder.' " " I don't know the piece," he replied, " but the des- cription is good, though it would be more accurate to say accidental rather than sneaky ! What I mean is, that there is nothing sensational about murders committed south of the Thames. There isn't an editor in London who would say " Thank you " for the murders we get. They have no news value. I mean, a husband. hits his wife harder than he meant to and kills her. That's the kind of murder that is committed south of the Thames."
" A sort of excessive domestic brawl," I suggested, " with not more than a couple of paragraphs in it."
" Yes ! "
" How do you explain the fact ? " I asked.
"I don't," he replied. " I merely state it. One can account for the fact that nearly all the sensational company- promoting crimes are committed north of the Thames. If a financier starts to go wrong he has to do it in the City, and the City is north of the river. But no one can account for the feet that the more imaginative and sensational murderers commit their crimes above the Thames. Inter- esting financial criminals are sent first to Wormwood Scrubs from the Old Bailey: I remember being told by an officer at the Scrubs that three of the most accom- plished scoundrels in the world of high finance were in the prison at one time ! Three of them at once ! Most interesting I I should say that the level of crooked intel- ligence at Wormwood Scrubs is very high, but south of the river, at Wandsworth, say, the general level of crooked intelligence is low. North of the Thames you get good poisoning cases or crimes of passion-7-all guaranteed to fill columns of the newspapers for days at a time ; but south of the Thames you seldom get any but mean, unin- teresting felonies : wife-beating, house-breaking,. unpre- meditated murder that is really Manslaughter or aggra- vated assault, and any - amount of petty :larceny. The Bywaters and Mrs. Thompsons, the Seddons, the Crippens, all of them either inhabit the northern suburbs or commit their crimes there." _ I thought the chaplain spoke with some feeling, as if he resented the habit sensational. murderers had of working outside, so to speak, his jurisdiction. There he was, incessantly- toiling for long hours every day,: among Prisoners, not one of .whom could provide him with an interesting passitge for his reminiscences of prison life. His colleagues on the north 'of the Thames had all the luck. I tried to divert his thoughts by speculation on the cause of this singular disparity between the criminal interest of the North of.London and that of the South. Was Middlesex more marshy than Surrey, did he think ? He hadn't an idea. Was the Kentish imagination less febrile than that of Essex ? He thought that they were equally sluggish. There were more gardens south of the Thames than there arc north of it. Had that anything to do with the South's immunity from murder ? Not a bit ! Did he think that, just as revolutionary anarchists leave London alone because they wish to have one haven of refuge, so the sensational criminals preserve South London in a state of protective dullness so that they may retreat there when times are too hot for them in the North ? He said there was nothing in the suggestion. Could the fact that all the newspaper offices were on the north side of the Thames have anything to do with the fact that all the sensational murders were done there ?
" There may be something in that," said the chaplain; in the tone of a man pondering over an idea that may explain a mystery to him. " I had not connected the two facts before. It's odd, isn't it, that all the newspaper offices are north of the Thames, and that all the sensa- tional murders are committed north of it, too ? "
We sat in silence while the frightful thought sank into our minds. Then I spoke : " Do you think," I said, " it would be any help to you if the newspapers were to move across the Thames and settle in Surrey .? "
• OT. JOIIN ERVINE.
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